Kamile Lukosiute
“Characteristics of Active Filaments Confined to Spheres”
Kamile Lukosiute, Abhijeet Joshi, Aparna Baskaran, Michael Hagan
Wellesley College / Physics
Hosted by Basrakan's Lab
Abstract
“Active matter” describes a type of matter that consumes energy at microscopic scales to produce dynamics at a much larger scale. Research in active systems aims to one day create materials that self-assemble or otherwise mimic living organisms. Self-propelled particles are a type of building block that constitute active matter. Even though a theoretical framework describing the dynamics of such particles exists in literature, the effects of confinement to a curved manifold are poorly understood. Confinement and curvature are particularly interesting because of the many examples in biology, where systems are rarely flat. Particles with internal degrees of freedom add additional complexity. In this work, we study the dynamics of a single self-propelled polymer confined to a spherical surface using molecular dynamics simulations. Preliminary results reveal three distinct states: coiling, orbiting and “tennis-ball” curves.